Business
PSB Licence, Key In Financial Inclusion -Analyst

The Payment Service Banking ( PSB) licences given to Airtel and MTN is expected to play a key role in expunging financial ignorance in low-income areas.
A financial analyst, Emmanuel Orji, disclosed this while speaking on CBN’s final approval to Airtel and MTN for their respective PSB licenses.
According to Orji, quite a number of people do not own bank accounts due to the lack of information or sensitisation on the ease and importance of opening an account and most banks are more focused on reaching the already-banked rather than the unbanked percentage of the population.
“Even with the efforts in trying to make the bank processes easy as it is now, there is no incentive to address the ignorance on the streets.
“We hardly see banks hosting seminars on how to open a bank account in those low-income areas and that is just focusing on those that already have some sort of knowledge about how the banking app and account opening works.
“I think the PSB license is given to Airtel and also to MTN is definitely going to play a huge role”, he said.
He also explained that the MTN CFO, during the company’s earnings call, disclosed that the company currently has 180 active agents and registered over 800 active agents across different states in Nigeria.
Another analyst, Olumide Adesina, who commented on the PSB licenses, even though the service provides options for users, focus should also be directed on the e-naira.
“The major positivity from the consumer point of view is that it gives users many options and that is what financial inclusion is all about.
“But in the long run, I think we should focus more on the e-naira adoption, given the fact that transaction cost is expensive relatively across many platforms, especially if you are using overseas or multinational transactions,” Adesina said.